The Media Discover the Poor

"Federal officials appear to be seeking proof to blame the flood of New Orleans on environmental groups, documents show.

" The Clarion-Ledger has obtained a copy of an internal e-mail the U.S. Department of Justice sent out this week to various U.S. attorneys' offices: 'Has your district defended any cases on behalf of the (U.S.) Army Corps of Engineers against claims brought by environmental groups seeking to block or otherwise impede the Corps work on the levees protecting New Orleans? If so, please describe the case and the outcome of the litigation .'

"Who sent out this email? And who was going to use it? Needed for analyzing new environmental law issues? Part of the 'takings' debate? Did we mention that Karl Rove has been put in charge of the reconstruction effort?"

Laura Turner at Liberalism Without Cynicism explores the origins of Bush's New Orleans address:

"According to David Kuznet at the New Republic, it wasn't Michael Gerson who wrote the masterpiece. It was Bush's new head speechwriter, William McGurn. Just how completely phony was the speech? McGurn is a former editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page! All that big-government-conservatism, your-government-is-there-for-you pap Bush was spouting had been penned by one of those WSJ drown-it-in-the-bathtub, government-is-the-enemy hyper-libertarians, whose ex-colleagues have, among other things, been urging Bush to use Katrina as an excuse to push school vouchers on the exiled flood victims moving into other communities!"

Cindy Sheehan , who has moved her media show to Louisiana, seems to getting more personal with the president:

I saw in the paper that George Bush said the recovery in the Gulf States would be 'hard work.' That's what he said about sending troops to Iraq and looking at the casualty reports everyday: 'It's hard work.' That man has never known a day of hard work in his life."

How exactly is that helping her cause?

Even the tiniest aspects of the Bush presidency are not without controversy, such as his bathroom-break note to Condi, according to Photo District News

"The white parts of the picture were overexposed, so a Reuters processor used Photoshop to burn down the note. This is a standard practice for news photos, Gary Hershorn [a Reuters news director] says, and the picture was not manipulated in any other way."

Ah, but this could be the media's Pottygate, says Matthew Sheffield at Newsbusters (dedicated to exposing liberal bias):

"Did Bush write the first part of the note? It's possible but there are several problems with that hypothesis. The first and biggest is the difference in handwriting styles. Why would Bush take the time to write in two different manners in a little note?

"The second problem is that the phrase ends with a question mark. More than likely the president, being the highest-ranking American official in the room, would tell someone to set it up, not ask if it were possible for him to go."

Where are those CBS handwriting experts when you need them?